Martin Surbeck is broadly interested in understanding animal behavior and has developed a diverse research background, combining unique study systems and locations during his undergraduate studies—including sociality in wasps (India), orientation in desert ants (Tunisia), and bird migration (Mauritania). He found his career path when he helped establish a bonobo research site in a remote rainforest region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, he performed extensive fieldwork on bonobo social dynamics while pursuing his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
After successfully launching a second bonobo research site and leading an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute, Martin joined the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University as a faculty member. His research examines various facets of ape social life, focusing particularly on social relationships, cognition, and the interplay of cooperation and competition both within and between groups. For example, his work addresses power dynamics between males and females and explores structures of cooperation that transcend social boundaries. Martin is particularly interested in integrating findings from bonobo and chimpanzee studies to shed light on the evolution of human social behavior.